Asian Latin Americans have a centuries-long history in the region, starting with Filipinos in the 16th century. The heyday of Asian immigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, however.

There are currently more than four million Asian Latin Americans, nearly 1% of Latin America's population. Chinese and Japanese are the group's largest ancestries; other major ones include Filipinos and Koreans. Brazil is home to the largest population of Asian Latin Americans, at some 1.5 million.[8][9] The highest ratio of any country in the region is 5%,[3] in Peru.

There has been emigration from these communities in recent decades, so that there are now hundreds of thousands of people of Asian Latin American origin in both Japan and the United States.

Most Asians, however, arrived in the 19th and 20th century as contract workers or economic migrants. Today, the overwhelming majority of Asian Latin Americans are of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean descent. Japanese migration mostly came to a halt after World War II (with the exception of Japanese settlement in the Dominican Republic), while Korean migration mostly came to an end by the 1980s (though it still continues in Guatemala) and Chinese migration remains ongoing in a number of countries.

Settlement of war refugees has been extremely minor: a few dozen ex-North Korean soldiers went to Argentina and Chile after the Korean War,[10][11] and some Hmong went to French Guiana (which may or may not be considered part of Latin America depending on the definition) after the Vietnam War.[12]

Geographic distribution

Four and a half million Latin Americans (almost 1% of the total population of Latin America) are of Asian descent. The number may be millions higher, even more so if all who have partial ancestry are included. For example, Asian Peruvians are estimated at 5%[3] of the population there, but one source places the number of all Peruvians with at least someChinese ancestry at 4.2 million, which equates to 15% of the country's total population.[13]

Emigrant communities

Canada

Canada has been a destination for Asian Latin American emigration. The immigrants usually settle in the largest cities, such as Vancouver and Toronto, and integrate into the overall Asian Canadian communities.

Japan

Japanese Brazilian immigrants to Japan numbered 250,000 in 2004, constituting Japan's second-largest immigrant population.[16] Their experiences bear similarities to those of Japanese Peruvian immigrants, who are often relegated to low income jobs typically occupied by foreigners and, as with other immigrants, are vulnerable to the Yakuza.[14]